


When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire

by Aeshna etonensis (GMWWemyss)



Series: Modest Proposals [7]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Binyon, Bonfire Night, Boxing Day, Christmas, Gen, JRRT references, Literary References & Allusions, M/M, Peak District, References to Shakespeare, Remembrance Day, Slade - Freeform, TS Eliot, War memorials - Freeform, Wizzard - Freeform, anoraks, poppies, the legion - Freeform, trainspotting - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-08 10:51:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5494505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GMWWemyss/pseuds/Aeshna%20etonensis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two holidays in after years, in the Peak.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bubba (absynthedrinker)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/absynthedrinker/gifts), [Niler](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Niler/gifts).



> Apparently, it is mandatory in this (and I suppose in any) fandom to Do A Holiday Story. For reasons which are totally inexplicable (and certainly incomprehensible by me), it is evidently also considered mandatory that British characters, even in British-canon-based fandoms, observe North American, and commonly US, holidays; or at least this is treated as being mandatory, by almost all writers. (I suppose this to be because Almost All Writers, for various discreditable reasons – ranging from ignorance, laziness, and unwillingness to do the research, to the cool calculation that lazy, ignorant, and research-averse readers demand just such writing, as it too often seems they indeed do –, set their stories in a curious world in which supposed Britons in a putative Britain (mis)use British slang whilst living wholly American lives immersed in American culture to an American calendar … all paid in American currency. It’s a sort of cod-Britain without cricket, railways, the Crown, Parliament, the pound sterling, the Established Church, drinkable beer, and the NHS. It makes life miserable for those few of us who actually like America and Americans (word to the wise: an extraordinary number of people don’t, ranging from Trots who regard Mr Obama as indistinguishable from Mr Bush to Tories still browned off over Suez … to ordinary Britons who are tired of tourists treating the country as a theme-park and gushing over Yeomen Warders, costume dramas, and bands from Liverpool).)
> 
> This is a holiday story, in that it concerns two holidays (and references a third). It is assuredly NOT set in some fun-fair version of a fake Britain. It is a little something I dashed off in a spare hour, when I wanted a diversion from the next actual book – and felt also that I wanted to give my faithful readers a Christmas gift of sorts, they being faithful and kind and deserving of gifts. It is perhaps a trifle too topical in some ways; lamentably, I have a perverse genius (in the Classical, Latin sense of the term: a daemon, in fact) which notoriously leaves me foreseeing things I don’t believe can come about or be as bad as all that … and which then promptly do, and are. If the first bit makes some readers unhappy, and it likely shall do, the second is as likely to raise their blood sugar levels dangerously. I cannot apologise, and do not, because that is how the story wrote itself, and I am merely the amanuensis.
> 
> Those so inclined are free to play Hunt the Reference, which is always fun to those familiar with British music (pop and otherwise) and letters and literature.
> 
> Otherwise, a Happy Christmas to those inclined, and may the fairies keep you and yours and Father Christmas sober for that day, and your gran rocking; may you find a twenty-something Jim Lea in your stocking (or a young Rick Price if that’s your preference); and may you look to the future (one with sonic screwdrivers, not bloody light-sabres, and does anyone else always think Noddy was secretly the Fourth Doctor?) with confidence. Let the bells ring out!

 ... ... ... 

 _Time present and time past_  
_Are both perhaps present in time future_  
_And time future contained in time past._

...

**I. Remembrance Sunday**

Remembrance Sunday, thought Zayn, sometimes fell a trifle too near to Bonfire Night. Ash and smoke lingered, on sleeves, on the palate, in the air; and in the mind. He had not, none of them had, seen and known war. Real war; real fighting: the sort which isn’t dealt out and dealt with by solicitors with silks waiting to be called in, and accountants, and agents and red-top hacks and crooked labels and corrupt Masters of Spin and all the base, scurrying creatures who together made up the most rotten and noisome industry on the planet.

But he knew that those who _had_ done, had seen and known, had tasted heavy on the reeking air, ash and smoke, blood, bodily corruption, burnt-out vehicles and shattered structures, HE and cordite and All That; and scattered viscera which had only just prior been a person.

It is an uneasy thing to have that scent hang heavy on November’s airs on a Remembrance Sunday.

Liam … Liam didn’t like to think about the origins of Bonfire Night, and the anti-Catholic aspects; but he did love a bonfire. Or rather, mused Zayn, he loved building one, and lighting it, and having split the wood for it (hearty in flannel and a man of parts, handy with ancient tools and craft); loved the mastery of nature, the careful watch and ward upon the flames (a good servant, fire, yet a dangerous one); loved being out in the cold, keen airs of the Peak with the beacons of a thousand years and more kindled anew. (Not, reflected Zayn, that Liam perhaps _knew_ of those beacons, the beacons on the high horizons which had so long knitted the realm together in times of peril: warning the Celt of the Saxon, and the Saxon of the Dane; warning far inland England that the Armada had been sighted in the Channel.... If such thoughts occurred to Liam, knew Zayn, they did so only as dim instinctive impulses, atavistic, the inspiration for the beacons calling for aid from Amon Dîn ever Westwards to the Halifirien on the marches of Rohan.... But Liam’s blood and gut and muscles knew the old ways he could not put in words and need not speak.)

And, thought Zayn, wryly, they’d never have remained so long together had Liam objected to the smell of smoke.

Liam, more even than had Zayn, had grown into Bent Clough as if rooted there for a hundred generations.

And the ward and the County knew it. Which was why they were on the rota today, to act, as co-opted councillors, in the stead of higher authority, in Longnor.

All too soon, thought Zayn, they’d _be_ that higher authority: it was inevitable that they should in time – and that time not far off – find themselves Deputy Lieutenants. (Zayn paused for a moment to contemplate the image of Liam, with belt and sword, in the uniform of a DL; and tore his mind away from that alluring image by main force, with all that they had before them this day in duty.)

Shivering, not altogether from the cold air, he carefully extinguished his fag and went inside.

Liam gave him a distracted smile as he entered, and a quick buss upon his chilled jaw. The telly was on, muted; the wireless was on, as the Beeb slogged through the news of the day; the newspapers (Liam had been born, really, to be a householder, indeed a _paterfamilias,_ a solid second edition of Geoff) were scattered about: the _Buxton Advertiser,_ the _Derbyshire Times,_ the _Glossop Advertiser,_ the _Leek Post & Times: _all the small doings of the Peak, in Staffs and Derbs alike; the _Express and Star,_ keeping Liam in touch with Wolvo and the Black Country; the _Yorkshire Evening Post,_ the _Yorkshire Post,_ the _Leeds Express,_ the _Telegraph & Argus _hot from Bradford, evidence of Liam’s unending solicitude for Zayn; and of course the _Indy_ and the _Grauniad,_ the _FT_ and (Zayn suppressed a smile) the _Torygraph...._ Liam, with every passing year, grew more solidly a Working Class Tory, though he’d never admit it any more than Geoff did. And, to judge by the distracted quality of his smile – and however distracted or dismayed, he never denied Zayn his smile and adoration, who even after these years yet craved them greedily – to judge by the distraction beneath his smile, Liam had heard or read news which he disapproved.

‘Babe?’

‘Eh, love, nothing to trouble … you’d best get your suit on, we can’t be late.’

Time _was_ pressing, a bit; and Zayn knew better than to press. With a quick kiss, he nipped up the stairs to change. After all, he could hear and watch the news as he did so. He thought, with a sudden frown, that if it had been another terror outrage, and Liam meant to _shield_ him.... The years passed, but he yet remembered, he should never forget, Paris in 2015, and the hot outrage (he could feel it even now: some coals do not burn to ash and smoke) that Islam and the _ummah_ had been dishonoured by those fooking _jihadi_ bastards who dared claim to act in the name of the Faith and the community.

It wasn’t anything so dire. By the time he knotted his tie, he knew what had raised Liam’s hackles. Students, Trots, aging Old Corbynistas, the usual mob, demanding things, demoing and declaiming.... It was petty and puerile, but Liam, thought Zayn, was rather more offended and angry than the occasion seemed to warrant. Student Union firebrands making idiotic demands, probably in incomprehensible jargon they couldn’t so much as _spell_ properly: fact of life, thought Zayn, always had been, and they’d surely outgrow it. Liam, bless … peppery old colonel, as they came within sight of thirty, he was – or was becoming.

‘You look,’ said Liam, and trailed off, embracing him, there at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Every day you’re handsomer.’ He paused, and his eyes sharpened; and he tapped meaningfully at Zayn’s lapel.

‘I didn’t forget,’ protested Zayn. ‘I _wouldn’t._ It’s by the door with m’ keys, so I _don’t_ forget.’

Liam smiled. ‘Forgive me?’

Zayn tried and failed to suppress and answering smile. ‘We’ll see. As if I’d forget.’

They walked hand in hand to the Rover (trust Liam to have serviced it and washed and polished it for the day), and set off for Longnor, and the extension to the churchyard.

‘Student demos have you feeling a bit browned off?’ Zayn kept his voice even and his tone light, without judgement.

Liam snorted. ‘I don’t give a damn what their demands are, or their cause, or how noble it is or isn’t. It’s....’

‘Babe?’

Liam shook his head. ‘After the ceremonies.’

‘So long as you’re not upsetting yourself, babe, ’s all I care about.’

...

The day was still and grey; the air sunk coldly upon and into them. It didn’t matter.

The Legion took charge, as was right and just; the vicar of S Bartholomew’s and the Dean of Alstonfield were on hand. The War Memorial in the S Bartholomew’s churchyard extension stood stark against the leaden sky.

Faces were pinched and whitened, or reddened and chafed, by the cold; yet it seemed as if all the colour in the world, the red of blood sacrifice, had concentrated and distilled into the poppies of Remembrance: the same poppies as were in Zayn’s and Liam’s lapels as they stood straight and solemn for the march past, taking, as local councillors, the salute. Niall, blest reliable Niall, down from his Peak hideaway (and golfing bolthole) near Combs, stood just behind them, with a green, green wreath to lay on behalf of those Irishmen and women who’d chosen to serve in HM Forces in the wars, an Hon. Consul nowadays, the Pride of the Republic yet and its charm-offensive to the UK.

Bands; Scouts and Guides; the WI and the Mothers Union; the police and the fire brigade, who took a possessive pride in Liam’s role on Council, he serving on that committee … all of them filed past, with the Legion.

The Service of Remembrance: prayers and blessings, flags and colours, choir and band, hearts caught, hearts in throat. The weight of Remembrance (war and the pity of war). The wreaths were surprisingly heavy in the hand, heavier than they had otherwise been: weighted with history and memory. _They shall not grow old … At the going down of the sun and in the morning, / We will remember them...._ The Last Post; and the Rouse, the Reveille. (Every year it was the same shock, as the heart beat and the blood pulsed in one’s veins, just how long two minutes were in profound silence.)

Longnor was a village; its life, and its deaths, and its memorials, intimate. The reading of the names of the Fallen, the Glorious Dead of the two World Wars, did not take longer than forever, eternity in the moment. Gunner George Caley, dead at six-and-twenty, and buried at Ypres Reservoir. Pte John Gould, a son of the market square, who had left to seek new horizons in Australia and had died, aged twenty-six, at Passchendaele, serving in Australian Forces. Pte John Thomas Lownds, also not yet twenty-seven, killed two months before the Armistice, in France, never to come safe home to the Grange. John Mellor … the unkindest thing of all, thought Zayn with sudden, sharp grief. A century gone, and, there being nine-and-sixty Mellors J known to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, there was no one left who remembered with certainty _which_ John Mellor had here his memorial, or what had been his rank and regiment, and where he had fallen; even whether he had been the John Mellor lost to Richard and Ann Mellor of Longnor. Serjeant – he was a Sherwood Forester, the Nottinghamshire & Derbyshire Regt – Joseph Riley, but twenty-two and never to grow older, who died of his wounds three days before the War ended and never again saw his parents’ house in Longnor or his new wife and home in Buxton. Pte Samuel Riley, nineteen years in age when he died of his wounds eight days after the Armistice. Pte Thomas Robinson, 1st Canadian Mounted Rifles, dead at twenty-three, never again to sit at ease with pie and pint at Ye Olde Cheese which his parents kept and which he had left, young and adventurous, for Canada, never thinking to find himself in France. Sgt Joseph Slack, who wasn’t, for sergeants of Fusiliers are never slack, dead at forty-six, refusing slippered ease in his middle age when King and country called; his parents and wife not having even a grave to visit, his body unidentified save by God and his name on the Menin Gate. Acting Sgt Herbert Tunnicliffe, an old soldier of the South African campaigns who’d married Molly O’Brien of Dublin and volunteered to return to the old colours, only to die in 1915 when by rights he ought to have been taking his ease, the warrior’s just repose, in a time of mature peace. Pte Wilfred Tunnicliffe, of the next generation, killed in February of 1918. Bdr Lewis Mellor Wardle, Royal Field Artillery, aged thirty-nine, married fifteen years and leaving a widow. Pte Samuel Wheeldon, aged but one-and-twenty and never to grow old.

And the Second War’s toll as well.... Driver Thomas John Vernon Belfield, the Sapper, dead in the Telemark Raid and buried at Stavanger in ‘Norway across the foam;’ L/Bdr Leslie Horobin, twenty years in age, an artilleryman in a maritime regiment, lost at sea and remembered at Portsmouth with too many others whose bodies were committed to the deep; Pte Isaac William Turner, dead at seven-and-twenty in Burma, far from Reapsmoor and the Peak; and Gnr Dennis Grindey, who served his gun against Rommel in the desert and whose sands ran out at twenty-one: his name is recorded imperishably amongst the other Fallen at Alamein.

And now the old soldiers, sailors, and airmen, a few last Wrens and ATS, WAAFS and WRACS and QAs, QARRNs and PMRAFNs, Land Girls and Bevin Boys, filed past, some hale and some halt, some in Bath chairs; and their younger counterparts, with perhaps an aluminium limb, or blinded, or forever hobbled.... All of them carefully dressed; each of them with ribbons and medals gleaming.

And suddenly Zayn knew why Liam had been – in, perhaps, a way he could not have articulated – angered by the morning’s news, as he might not have been on any other morning. For these were the men and women who knew better. Zayn had seen, year in, year out, the wounded, the permanently scarred or blinded or otherwise disabled, old members of HM Forces on Remembrance Sunday: aged sergeants or lance-jacks from Korean service, handsome young captains who’d left limbs in deserts when the IEDs had gone off, and all saying, always, the same, essential things; and the parents and spouses and older children of the Fallen, all with the same thing to say, in working class accents or the tones of country houses and parish jumbles and gymkhanas.

The dead did not speak; but their families spoke for them. _It’s all he ever wanted to be … we were so proud of Our Kev … all his mates loved him, like … o’ course I miss him, I’m his mum, but he were doin’ what he allus wanted to do;_ and, _Yes, Jeremy had always had an eye to Sandhurst: family tradition, of course … the family regiment …his great-grandfather, you know, commanded a division – always felt he’d let the side down, rather, did my grandfather:_ his _father had a corps, and the VC...._

And the living, yearly, spoke for themselves, every Remembrance Sunday. ‘Oh, Ah nivver miss ’un: Ah’m here for all th’ lads Ah knowed as nivver could be’; ‘There’s a special bond’; ‘Oh, absolutely, the older chaps are brilliant, advice on learning to live with the injury, you know, and the Association is simply super, always helpful’; ‘It’s an honour to be in the company of heroes – oh, _I’m_ no hero, not at all, but I _am_ proud and honoured to have worn the same uniform as those who are’; ‘Nay, pet, y’ don’t think in those terms; y’ gew on, you’re not crippled by nowt, nobbut y’ _decide_ y’ are’....

Zayn knew he’d endured his share – and several other people’s shares with it – of injustice, hostility, hatred, and bigotry. He’d found it amusing, if – just a trifle – annoying, to hear young people not much his junior, who _had_ had the chance to go to university, scream and shriek about the Oppressions of Latin Grace at Formal Hall or the presence of statuary or portraits or arms of founders and benefactors who’d been fairly enlightened for their own days, centuries gone, but who wouldn’t be praised by a leader-writer or trendy bishop nowadays. Amusing, yes; a trifle annoying with it, because the ‘micro-aggressions’ they whinged incessantly about were pinpricks to the _macro-_ aggressions he’d experienced (and Liam had suffered, and Haz-and-Tommo had borne (although not with patient, long-suffering silence on Louis’ part), and which even Nialler had been stung by once or twice).

Now, in this moment, he realised that even these things: being derided by millions of anonymous hatemongers, living under a spotlight as under a microscope so that the eager ill-wishers could rejoice to see the cracks appear and the wounds bleed, suffering racist abuse, being targeted by open (if anonymous) hate for one’s looks or colour or (he was always angrier on Liam’s behalf than on his own) weight, or for their sexualities even before they ever announced those: these things also were pinpricks (at the hands of a mob of utter pricks, brandishing sharp pins) when set against real wounds sustained in real battle for real causes. These men and women and their comrades of HM Forces hadn’t had their noses put out of joint by ‘micro-aggressions’: they put their limbs and lives to the wager of battle, dealing and repelling mega-aggressions, without complaint, without whinging even from hospital wards when the wager was lost and their bodies broken.

Safe spaces? If any spaces were safe, they were kept safe by such as these, who fought to make and keep them so.

Students sobbing that it was ‘a violence’ to be forced to encounter other views and the shadows of history whilst up at Oxford or Cambridge – a chance he’d have given his eye-teeth for – had no business at university, if this were the measure of their minds; no business at all if _that,_ reflected he, was what they thought ‘a violence’, and an intolerable one, was. Not today. Not when the men and women with decorations and Operational Service Medals, and unconquerable good cheer as to their own sufferings, mourning only for comrades who came not home, were on parade.

A hundred years on, would anyone remember a boyband? Would his name, or Liam’s, be recalled? He almost hoped not: not if they were to be remembered whilst J Mellor – or those filing past upon this day: here and in every village, town, or city in the nation, and above all at the Cenotaph – were forgotten. It were unjust if it were so. Yet if he and Liam, and Nialler, and Hazza and Tommo, were to be forgotten, then surely the student Trots and the self-righteously ignorant and those who denounced the memory of those who had not been forgotten but whose views would not be admired today, deserved oblivion all the more. _A poppy is to remember...._ Let the petty and the puerile be forgotten; let even Liam’s beloved name cease to mean anything to after generations who did not know him and love him as everyone did or ought to love him; but these men and women who had served, and their comrades who had died … let their names, familiar in the mouth as household words, be yearly after freshly remembered, from now unto the ending of the world.

As usual, thought Zayn, Liam could hardly have put into words why precisely he was affronted, by the ugly juxtaposition of selfish cant and solemn remembrance; and as usual, reflected Zayn, Liam had been right and had known in his bones what was right, without words for it or the want of words.

This also, thought he, he must remember, always, so long as poppies blow in Flanders fields.

...

**II. Boxing Day**

‘Mm?’

The vocable was gloriously sleepy and warm and content, emerging from a mound of wool, blankets and duvet piled high and disposedly.

It was a frigid Boxing Day morning – _late_ morning – at Bent Clough, and wee Joe had been taken away by his doting Malik grandparents, and the Paynes had departed in a body with other grandchildren; and the house was quiet after the joyous Christmas madness, and Zayn had no reason to rouse and rise for at least an hour more.

Or he’d not have were it not that he was being prodded, and not in a _fun_ fashion, by someone who ought to be in bed with him, not standing there poking him, smiling so widely his eyes were slits, and … oh. All right, thought Zayn, muzzy with sleep. Steaming mugs and a tray? _That_ was an acceptable reason for Liam’s being up and about rather than spooning him in their woollen cocoon. (Although he had a strong suspicion, not least from Liam’s complexion, that the mad bugger whom he loved had actually got up early, done some training, chopped wood, played gentleman farmer, and quite possibly run two miles in the rime and frost. Which was clever of Zayn, as Liam had, naturally, done just that. But that was a matter to be mocked later: he was, reflected Zayn, damned if he’d let his eggs and chicken banger go cold.)

...

Having Liam as a partner, mused Zayn, was like getting a puppy for Christmas … every day. And _at_ Christmas, well.... Liam’s religious observance had always been vestigial and nominal; but, adjusting for denomination, most nominal Christians or people raised (nominally) as such were the same way. In this country, at least: there were, on his mum’s side of the family, plenty of examples. The local vicar had told Zayn once that the Established Church had an actual term for them, for the people who went to church – bar weddings and funerals and baptisms – only on Christmas and Easter: ‘C&E C of E’. Yet Liam went utterly, besottedly mad for all aspects of Christmas, as Zayn well knew; and, as Zayn well knew, he was only going to get worse now that they were parents.

He’d wondered about that, early on (very early on: he seemed to remember that Liam was yet straightening his hair: it was that long ago, when they were _infants_ ): until, one day, with the wireless blaring Christmas music (in bloody _October,_ if he remembered aright), Liam had begged him to turn it up, face open and glowing with joy (it was the sort of look he wore, later, when the Beeb handed ’round a rainbow cake), bouncing with excitement. In fact, there’d been two of the more unavoidable Christmas pop songs, in a row, with Liam singing along with utter, abandoned glee. And it had crossed Zayn’s mind to look into both songs, and bands, online, instead of simply ignoring them as chestnuts, as a part of the inevitable matrix of seasonal noise every year, year after year after bloody year for as long as he’d been alive.

He ought really to have remembered, without having to look it out, that Slade were from Wolvo and Walsall; and Wizzard, from Brum. Apparently, Liam’s was simply a West Midlands obsession, and, no doubt, everyone from the Bull Ring to the Black Country really _did_ Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday.

So, there it was: Merry Christmas, everybody … ’s having fun. Every year. Come November, and he knew damned well Liam was hanging stockings on the wall.

Now, though, a brief peace, a Boxing Day peace, had descended sweetly on the old farmhouse. And, for the first time in rather too long, loving fatherhood and adoring wee Joe though he did, he and Liam were all alone, with a few uninterrupted hours before them. He might have piled blankets and duvets and comforters on their bed, but, with the house properly warm now, Liam, Mr Sporty McTraining, could bleeding well get his cardio in by shagging him _through_ the things and into the headboard....

‘Oi,’ said Zayn, suddenly aggrieved as he walked into their bedroom. Liam broke off mid-snore.

‘Want a cuddle, love?’ His voice was warm and thick with sleepiness.

Zayn pouted (it worked quite as well on Liam as Liam’s pouts and puppy-eyes worked on him, after all, and they’d been honing their craft on one another for years). ‘What I _want,_ babe, is you inside me, like, and sharpish.’

Liam chuckled through a yawn. ‘Hope you want it slow, love.’

‘Too knackered?’ The waspishness was – mostly – teasing, and calculated.

‘ _I_ didn’t have a lie-in until damn’ near noon,’ said Liam, equally teasingly, as he suddenly pulled Zayn down with an _‘oomph’;_ ‘and, time I’m done with taking you apart all slow-like, _you’ll_ be knackered, and impossible to keep from kipping through the evening. And with guests coming, too.’

Zayn didn’t care _what_ Liam was banging on about, so long as he kept stripping him with the urgent efficiency of a man who was shortly to have a bang with him. Although he might, thought Zayn, put that pretty mouth to better use than … _oh. Yessss...._

...

Sated, sleepy, having been shagged with welcome brutishness and tenderly cleaned and drawn down to cuddle warmly, Zayn did his best to keep his eyes from drifting shut. ‘You’re not one for naps, babe,’ said he.

Liam gave a little half-shrug, careful not to dislodge Zayn’s head from its appointed resting place on his broad shoulder. ‘Not as a rule.’

A sudden worry spiked in Zayn. ‘Are you – are you not sleeping?’

Liam chuckled. ‘We’ve got Joe to sleep through the night, and all that means is _you’re_ the one getting me … _up._ Insatiable, you are.’

‘Little liar,’ said Zayn, punctuating the accusation with a kiss. ‘’S first time in _weeks_ we’ve been able to have a proper shag. Babe.... You’re not having –’ he carefully avoided the obvious word – ‘bad dreams again after all this time.’

‘Nnnooooo. Not to say, “bad”. I mean, not like the nightmare about the Chinese buying out the golf club at our place in Surrey, or the one _you_ had, the one I made you skate on the ice at Somerset House, down London, in.’

‘Babe!’

‘Nothing to worry your gorgeous head over, anyroadup. I reckon fatherhood don’t tire me brain out before bed like us shagging each other rotten three times a day used to do, ’s all.’

‘Tell me,’ said Zayn, fiercely, ready to do battle even with dreams to keep his Liam safe and happy.

‘Love.... It’s not terrors. Anxiety dreams, more like. I reckon that comes of fatherhood. Or knowing that we’re to have Haz and Tommo as house guests in three hours, and Nialler joining us tomorrow.’

Worried though he was, Zayn couldn’t help but snigger at that. It was too true. The prospect of Tommo on a tear in the house was enough to make anyone anxious.

‘I reckon,’ said Liam, comfortably, ‘the first ’un was a few weeks since. A steam train in a snowy landscape; and at first I thought, _Oh, Zed’s arriving,_ all happy, like. But it were the wrong train.’

Zayn held Liam closely and simply listened.

‘Somehow, I … it were Germany, for some reason. I couldn’t make out the signs, but the locomotive... a DRG Class 99.22.’ Harry, of course, supported them; Niall encouraged them; Louis mocked them mercilessly; but all the same, as the years had passed, the two former comic-book-and-graphics-novels-anoraks had become literal trainspotters, Zayn if anything more than Liam. He understood perfectly.

‘I don’t know,’ said Liam, slowly, thinking hard; ‘it may be that, now I’ve less to worrit about, the dreams are different –’

‘Happen they are,’ said Zayn, rather fiercely, ‘but if they upset you, I’ll not tolerate –’

Liam hugged him more tightly and dropped a kiss upon his Conventionally Furrowed Brow. ‘Me knight in shiny armour, you are. But it’s not that bad. Just … frustrations, I reckon, built up. Oh! There were one I remember, last minute and I’ve not yet got your gift, and there’s nought in me wallet – no cards, no notes – but American notes and coins, and less than eleven of their dollars, just at seven pound worth in real money. And there was one where we were all Father Christmas’ elves....’

Zayn snorted. ‘Tommo’d be the grumpiest elf to ever elf. He’s the sort of bugger who’d look at his neighbour’s outdoor Christmas lights and string up his own to spell out, “twat”, with an arrow pointing next door.’

Liam positively giggled. ‘But mostly … it’s nothing _frightening,_ but. We’re apart for some reason and I can’t somehow get back next to you.’

Zayn opened his mouth, thought again, and closed it. This was no time to cover The Temptations. After a moment, he said, gently, ‘But that _is_ frightening. To me, it is.’

‘Being in Germany and the States? Always was, love.’

‘No, you doughnut. Not … um. Not being together, being kept apart, missing connections. And I think. Babe, I think, with Christmas and all, and wanting everything to be Christmassy for Joe even though he won’t, like, remember it come next year, and the families at us all the time –’

‘They don’t wish to see _us,_ love, all they want is Joe-time.’ Liam was grinning the grin of a man who knew himself to be unanswerably right.

‘I know, babe. I know. But – all of that. You’re having frustrated dreams because you _are_ frustrated, and distracted, and anxious, and not tired enough in the right way.’

‘When you say, “frustrated”....’

‘What with Christmas and all, and fatherhood.’

‘So, Dr Malik, you prescribe … hmm?’

‘More daily orgasms. Vitamin _D._ And I think it’s not too soon for another dose, before –’

‘You’re _insatiable,_ ’ laughed Liam, as he rolled them over. ‘You can’t tell _me_ it’s only for _my_ benefit you – _oh._ ’

Zayn smirked, wickedly; and rolled his hips again in Just That Way. ‘Only for you, though, babe,’ said he, breathily, pupils already dilating. ‘Always insatiable for – _yes. Liam...._ ’

...

Louis, predictably, blew in like a winter gale, as Harry straggled behind him laden with hampers of home-baked treats; and took one look at the sleek, sated, sex-smug self-satisfaction of his hosts and turned about on his heel to stalk out, crying out, melodramatically (indeed, in the tones of a Lady Bracknell), ‘Disgusting!’, and, ‘Shameless!’, as Harry fell about with laughter. (At least, thought Zayn, Niall wasn’t due yet: _he’d_ have brayed like a seaside donkey.)

‘Don’t chew the scenery,’ said Zayn, with a Very Old-Fashioned Look at his old friend. ‘The two of _you_ are an hour behind time.’

‘And,’ said Liam, smiling like a cat in a dairy, ‘the Highways Agency claims the roads are clear and traffic’s light.’

‘So you found a way to pass the time?’ Harry was dimpled with sniggering.

‘When,’ asked Louis, hamming it like a panto dame, ‘have they ever _not?_ ’

Liam and Zayn exchanged silent – and wholly unsubtle – smiles, and said nothing.

... ... ...

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYBODY

As Noddy says:

_IT’S CHRISTMAAAAASSSSSSSS!_

... ... ...

 

**Author's Note:**

> Perhaps the most important point: the names, ranks, and service histories of the Fallen named here are accurate and factual.


End file.
